Trump commits his (first) impeachable act

Within hours of being sworn in, convicted felon Donald Trump committed his first blatantly impeachable act. Trump made good on one of his vilest campaign promises, pardoning and commuting the sentences of those convicted of even the most violent of crimes during his Jan. 6, 2021 coup attempt.

Trump did not bother with detail. He freed even those who viciously beat police officers with bats, metal poles, stun guns, and other weapons. He freed those who smuggled guns to the Capitol. He freed the militia members who coordinated to orchestrate crowd actions and to hunt down the fleeing House and Senate members, resulting in battles between security details and the mob inside the Capitol and in the tunnels used to evacuate lawmakers. He freed those who had been convicted explicitly of seditious conspiracy—a planned attempt to overthrow the government of the United States by force.

And he simultaneously gave the Department of Justice his first order, one that in any past modern administration would on its own been a scandal and crime above all others: They must drop all ongoing investigations and indictments of anyone else who did violence inside the Capitol on that day.

The order was plain, its purpose crystal-clear. Under The Criminal's regime, the government is not allowed to investigate his allies. They are not allowed to prosecute those who do crimes that Donald favors; they are not allowed to try.

And that is because Donald Trump is a criminal who orchestrated a violent insurrection rather than allow his monumental ego to be dented by the same election loss that every other political figure experiences as a matter of course. He is a seditionist. He is a traitor to his country, to democracy, and to the rule of law.

And he remains so, whether a coordinated effort by media companies and billionaires to memory-hole his indictments, convictions, and laundry list of crimes returns him to power or not.

There is no point in asking whether the House and Senate Republicans who had to flee from a mob chanting about killing those who had earned Trump's seditious wrath will condemn him for releasing those who tried to hunt them down. This is not because they are cowards—the world is filled with cowards, heaven knows, but each of these figures rose to power by being the hardest-headed and most driven Americans the country had on offer.

Whether anyone condemns Trump for freeing those who participated in bloody violence to return him to power is irrelevant. There is only one act that matters.

Either they remove Trump from office or they do not. There is no gray zone here.

Many of Republicanism's most powerful figures understood the coup for what it was and condemned it roundly, while the sweat from their own escapes still glistened on their skin. Sen. Mitch McConnell; Sen. Lindsey Graham; even the most performative of supplicants drew the line at their own attempted murders. But it did not last, and the lust for power overcame every other instinct, and here we are—with Trump returned to power, unashamed of his acts, unpunished, now openly rewarding those who attempted to overthrow democracy on his behalf.

This is not some obscure Constitutional provision that must be endlessly debated, with crook-enabling abusers of the law insisting that the president is perfectly free to accept foreign bribes so long as he hands out receipts. In freeing those who committed horrific violence on his behalf, Trump is sending a message that needs no interpretation.

Under Trump, those who commit terrorism for the sake of his power will be immunized from justice. It is, quite literally, a Get Out Of Jail Free card. Those who stockpiled weapons outside Washington, D.C., in 2021 preparations to act as the brownshirted thugs of Trump's incited rebellion have been put back on the streets. Those who beat law enforcement, back on the streets. Those who shouted to the crowd that Mike Pence needed killing, back on the streets.

Trump has sanctioned domestic terrorism on his behalf. Not in the past—going forward. He has set the gears in motion to make sure it happens by showing his support for the acts, by praising the acts, and by using his new power to free those who committed the acts.

It is utterly irrelevant whether any in Trump's party "condemn" the move or do not. They are either with terrorism or against it; they either think that mobs ought to be able to execute peers who criticize Trump or they do not.

Articles of impeachment will, presumably, be drafted up immediately. And then every Republican will decide, once again: Does the rule of law matter, or can even Jan 6 be forgiven in service to the party's resident madman. Are they lawmakers, or are they accomplices.

We know what will happen. It will not be a surprise; from historians to political theorists to Trump's own former inner circle, there is no longer any doubt that The Criminal intends to dismantle the rule of law so that he and anyone who bows deeply enough to be considered his temporary ally can do crimes with impunity. We know that almost to a person, every Republican official will fall over themselves to justify and celebrate those crimes. It has already begun; Trump has freed those who tried to kill lawmakers and end our democracy.

Washington is now separated into two neat camps. There is, as in Trump's own order, no nuance here. Those in power are either protectors of the law or they are enemies.

It would not be bold for Mitch McConnell or other Republican senators to decide that Trump's pardon of the insurrectionists who bloodily beat hundreds of police officers, the police officers who were there solely for the purpose of holding the mob off as lawmakers themselves scrambled to safety, is an immediately disqualifying act. It is certainly a high crime. It is not just corrupt, but represents a clear and present danger to democracy—Trump has endorsed political violence on his behalf, and has freed the very people most likely to commit those new acts.

It's not bold to consider that, by itself, an insult to the Constitution so grievous that it cannot be stomached. It is the bare minimum. It is transparently obvious. It is the whole purpose of supposed "public office."

That would leave us with President JD Vance, an odious thought but still one that sees the country helmed by a man who merely plays sycophant to seditionists, not a man who immediately used his power to reward it in actual fact. Behind the scenes Trump is hated, truly hated, by the stalwarts of his own party, but they have always cowered when confronted with Trump's ability to aim an army of violent, death-threat issuing extremists at them over even the slightest provocation.

But Trump has now concretely proven himself the head conspirator of the Jan. 6 violence; he has held up his end of the deal and immunized his militia allies from the law. There will be relatively few, in the public, who will have the guts to argue that the attempted murder of police officers for the sake of Dear Leader is a crime that Dear Leader has the right to allow.

And it would be immensely useful to know who those defenders are, name by name. That is your list of terrorists, right there; that is the list of those that believe America must end so that their own fantasy versions can take hold.

There's little chance that impeachment articles won't get drawn up, articles that declare that Trump has committed a high crime in freeing those who attempted a coup at his own direction. There will likely be another set drawn up the first time Trump orders the military into U.S. cities on pretenses of maintaining order, and another when Trump orders the military to shoot those who protest against him—both are, like his promise to release his coup allies, threats he has long vowed to make real.

If Republicanism stands for all of that, and not against it, then it is a terrorist movement, not a political one. It exists to supplant laws with political violence. It exists so that the craven sycophants of America, spineless creatures like Lindsey Graham, can grab for whatever scraps of power Trump might dole out during each new crime and betrayal.

There are only two groups of people in Washington, D.C., whether it be in politics, in the media, or in the crowd of cocktail party hangers-on that orbits them. There are those who believe that violence enacted for the sake of keeping or expanding political power is so unforgivable and anti-American an act that its perpetrators must be removed from power regardless of intent or party.

All others amount solely to accomplices.